Fauci told Rachel Maddow he wanted to be on her show for ‘months’



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  • Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading disease specialist, said he was “blocked” under the Trump administration from appearing on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow”.
  • “I’ve wanted to come on your show for months and months,” Fauci told Maddow on Friday.
  • Fauci has openly expressed his feelings about working under Biden compared to the time he previously worked in the coronavirus task force under Trump.
  • Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.

Dr Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, said he could not take part in “The Rachel Maddow Show” because he was “blocked” from doing so under the Trump administration.

“I’ve wanted to come on your show for months and months. You’ve been asking me to come on your show for months and months,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infection, told Maddow in a report. interview Friday. “And it’s just blocked. Let’s call it that. It got stuck because they didn’t like the way you run things, and they didn’t want me.

Trump had repeatedly attacked MSNBC and its reporters during his presidency, even mocking a reporter who was shot dead by police with a rubber bullet during anti-racism protests last May.

Fauci said health officials will be more present and available to the media under Biden’s new administration.

“I think you’re going to see a lot of transparency,” Fauci said. “You might not see everyone as often as you want, but you are not going to see the deliberate retention of good people when the press calls for it.”

A day before Biden’s inauguration, the nation’s top disease specialist said serving in the Trump administration was “somewhat awkward.” At the start of the pandemic in the United States, Fauci was reportedly barred from speaking publicly about COVID-19 without approval. When he later warned against lifting the lockdown too soon, Fauci disappeared from television appearances.

“I don’t take much pleasure in criticizing the presidential leadership or the people around the president, but we have had a situation where science has been distorted and / or rejected,” Fauci said. “And a lot of pressure was put on individuals and organizations to do things that were not directly related to what their best opinion of science would be,” Fauci told Maddow. .

Fauci also recalled that he “resisted” this pressure and “had to do something that was not comfortable” by “directly contradicting the president and some people around the president who said things that were not compatible with the science”.

In an interview with CNN on Friday, Fauci said Biden wanted to “reset” the country’s approach to the virus and “let the science speak.”

“We really need to restore confidence and restore a unified approach,” he said.

During a White House briefing earlier this week, Fauci said: “It’s a somewhat liberating feeling” to no longer work under Trump, who has repeatedly undermined his assessments and advice on the pandemic.

“The idea that you can come up here and talk about what you know, what the evidence is – what science is, and know that’s it, let the science talk, that’s a bit a liberating feeling, ”Fauci said.

Read more:

Fauci says it’s ‘a liberating feeling’ to work for Biden instead of Trump, who has made statements ‘not based on scientific facts’

Fauci said US COVID-19 vaccines are potent enough to support new strains of the infection with limited impact on efficacy

Fauci says US could see ‘degree of normalcy’ by fall if 70-85% are vaccinated by late summer



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